French Cooking School

Friday night was one of the most fun, special, and memorable experiences of my life. Exactly a year ago (for our one year) Robert gave me a gift certificate for a French cooking lesson and we were finally able to redeem it this weekend. I had no idea what to expect going into the evening and in the end it was absolutely perfect.

The instructor, G, was hilarious, helpful, and engaging.

Heyyyy G

We got to do a lot of the prep work, I learned about proper knife skills (turns out I’ve been using knives incorrectly forever), the group of six couples couldn’t have been a more perfect match, and the food was absolutely delicious.

The happy chefs

Overall it was an ideal combination of learning, cooking, and eating as well as meeting new people, and doing something completely new and exciting. I should’ve known we were in for a great night when the confirmation e-mail earlier in the day instructed us to bring two to three bottles of wine per couple. We brought one of the bottles of wine from a vineyard in the Loire Valley that we visited during our trip to France earlier this year.

Robert looks like he could be leading the wine tasting portion of the evening. Nope, just refilling our glasses (again).

The class lasted four or five hours (our sense of time got a little fuzzy) and in true European fashion we sat down to the most incredible French feast around 11pm. Here’s a look at our menu:

If you like to cook, eat, or drink (or do any one of those three things) I highly recommend taking a cooking class like the one we did. I hope to do it again many times in the future. We went to a place called Cook Au Vin here in Chicago. You don’t even need to be a skilled chef to do it–they show you exactly how to do everything and the chef (and one of the eager students) took care of the most complicated parts of cooking the food.

It was truly such a special experience and I had the best time sharing it with my guy. When I walked into a restaurant for a blind date two years ago today I had no idea I was about to meet my future husband. These two years have been filled with so much laughter, love, and–of course–food. There’s no one in the world I’d rather share all of it with than you.